"There is no such crime as a crime of thought: there are only crimes of action." Clarence Darrow, 1917.

Sunday, July 20, 2014

Black June - JOINT BASE BALAD rendered an embarrassing relic of thwarted U.S. Military Power.

The control tower at Joint Base Balad.

The construction of Joint Base Balad, with its rebuilt runways and advanced electronic systems, coupled the sprawling Army logistical support facility known as LSA Anaconda, cost the American taxpayers an undisclosed fortune. Balad's reinforced runways are capable of receiving the giant C5 Galaxy transports, its hardened shelters are refurbished to receive the newly built Iraqi F16s, its base perimeter was the most secure in the Iraq- and all of that was ABANDONED because the Obama White House suddenly lost interest in a profitless war which reeked too much like America's defeat in Viet Nam.

Can it really be true? Balad, a small city astride a great highway,

is all that is stopping the ISIL sweep into Baghdad. That is what a

Shiite militia commander told the Los Angeles Times, just a week ago.

The Balad - Baghdad Highway, which the American army truckers called MAIN SUPPLY ROUTE TAMPA, has been raided by ISIL guerillas continuously for six weeks. ISIS/ISIL swept into Balad at least twice and then withdrew. Until very recently, when visited by the British BBC and the Los Angeles Times, we had only very sketchy reports of pinprick attacks along the asphalt corridor. In and around the Shiite controlled city, a tribal enclave which is an agricultural centre hosting a population of some 100,000, newly armed militiamen have concentrated and dug in, with some heavy weapons support from the Iraqi national army. But regular army officers are not in command at Balad. The Shiite militia commander has described his pattern of strong points as "the front line" in the defence of Baghdad. But of course Balad is not Normandy. There are plenty of exit ramps on the Iraqi freeways. The Muslim road warriors do have options. The President of Iraq has fewer.

This was the scene in 2010 as the principal American units pulled

out of JOINT BASE BALAD, leaving only small detachments of USAF

and CIA personnel to contribute to the covert Drone strike operations.

At the top of the photo - empty trailers wait under the overpass to

go into JBB to load military vehicles. At the bottom, loaded transports

THE PENTAGON'S REINVESTMENT IN JOINT BASE BALAD IS NOW A THWARTED ENTERPRISE.

JOINT BASE BALAD is still there, but no American journalists have entered the base in 2014. Worse, we have no explanation for the White House's massive re-investment in the superbase. In America it seems they still have mountains of money to burn. Until the bug-out in June, several hundred employees of American corporations were beavering away, prepping J.B.B. to receive Apache attack helicopters, Iraqi F16s and a squadron of CIA assassination drones. It was a highly secretive American outpost. Yes, Iraqi oil was paying for the new gunships and fighter aircraft, but the American taxpayer was footing the bill for everything else. Almost a billion new dollars to refit a base which had already squandered billions. And since the CIA budget is black, we do not know how many UAVs were in the pipeline for delivery to Joint Base Balad. There is no reason for ISIL/ISIS commanders to waste resources on attacking the hardened base. Base personnel are bottled up and chewing their fingernails. It is now clear, after more than a month of cringing silence, that the White House is not going to need the super-base, because the U.S. cavalry will not be going in to the rescue the Iraqi armed forces. The Muslim Road Warriors will ultimately break through at the city of Balad, and finish their campaign with a rush on the Shiite capital - Baghdad.

We are still waiting for the "Last Battle", the decisive event which allows the experts to declare a turning point in history. The final edit of the Wiki-page. How long will it be before we witness the FALL OF BAGHDAD? Weeks? Months? As a concerned Canadian, trying to make sense of "Great Power Thinking", I have to rely on journalism for much of my factual information. More and more I feel like a sucker. Didn't we all try to make sense of events in Iraq when the ISIS assault exploded as a news story? I found it disgusting to see how quickly the interest of "news editors" evaporated in less than two weeks. It really is a testament to the disproportionate influence American news production has on the worldwide information flow. The noise from New York is near deafening. By now there are hundreds of thousands of U.S. service personnel who know that their government is lying to them, on an hourly basis, but I'll wager they are no more equipped to discover what has been happening at Balad, and on the highways of Iraq than I am. Remember that sickening video, edited like a cat food commercial, which documented ISIS death squads roaming Iraqi highways? It was presented to us as "news" and according to whacky Wolf Blitzer, evidence that ISIS was a "band of terrorists". CNN and other American infotainment producers insisted the ghastly video was proof that ISIS was "scarier" than Hezbollah. Remember the "scarier than scary" narrative of Iraq during Black June 2014? We now know that ALL of that video was shot before the ISIS offensive in June, and had nothing to do with ISIS battlefield tactics. Now we also find that Hezbollah fighters are at Balad, in the front line defending Baghdad and the Maliki government. Hell just got hotter.

What was simply stunning to witness, was how quickly the Obama government distanced itself from the hapless antics of the Iraqi puppet government. The U.S. news media fell almost totally silent, as if the only thing worth reporting was White House blathering. During the first days of the BLACK JUNE offensive, as the ISIS/ISIL "road warriors" blitzed along the network of Iraqi national highways, CNN (ever the mouthpiece of the White House) was totally devoted to covering the Iraqi military collapse. But as soon as Obama media flaks signalled that Iraq was cut loose, CNN stopped covering the guerrilla war at all, and found other subjects for its "panel of experts" to chew on. Americans hate to chew on defeat, don't they?

Assessing the Black June successes of ISIS, the

U.S. Statement sees historical parallels. The Crusades!

Need we go further back than World War Two ?

THE EASIEST VICTORY IN HISTORY

The day after I posted my last blog (June 25) on the possible utility of Joint Base Balad to American military ambitions in the region, I was parked at a shopping mall with a bottle of water and a good read - John Williams "FRANCE - SUMMER 1940". As I read the introduction written by Sir Basil Liddell Hart, "The easiest victory in history", my thoughts turned to the possibility that that we are witnessing an even easier victory. A victory made possible not by any equivalence to German military innovation, but spawned by the reality American political arrogance. The history purest will object, insisting that there are no direct parallels between France in 1940 and Iraq of 2014. Perhaps. It is true that ISIS commanders deployed columns of pickup-truck borne fighters, not columns of light panzers and waves of Stukas. And while the Iraqi government was not dependant on any "Maginot Line" or superiority in tank forces, it WAS dependant on something even more daunting in this world - it expected backup from its powerful U.S. military ally. But rescue was denied.

If you think my historical analogy is half-baked, consider the opinion of a "Senior State Department Official" who accompanied John Kerry to Amman, Jordan. In an important press briefing on June 22, 2014, (archived on the State Department web-server) he reflected on the reasons for the unprecedented rout of the Iraqi military in the face of ISIS thrust south out of Syria. "I'm not an historian, but if you read histories of the crusades... there's some historic parallels maybe..." (extract below).

American political thinking in mid-June is made clear, as Iraqi towns were falling in sequence to ISIS/ISIL. "So we immediately faced some things we had to do. We wanted to look for a circuit breaker to try to break that kind of domino from on and on." Rather badly stated, don't you think? But it is interesting to see the metaphor of a "circuit breaker" used to explain the evacuation of civilian contractors from Balad Airbase, rather than its reinforcement. One cannot help wondering, what were the private thoughts of experts at the Pentagon, forced to accept throwing away a strategic asset which cost so much in U.S. blood and dollars.

Instead of rescuing his putative ally, America's "Commander in Chief" bobbed and bleated on about how "undemocratic" and "sectarian" the Malaki government is. Sure Malaki won the most votes, said Obama, but he is undeserving of further American support because he doesn't invite opponents into a "Unity Government". That's pretty rich coming from a De-moo-crat President, in the dis-united states of america. Are there more than 20 countries in the entire world which could hope to meet the worn-out American notions of governance? What the Americans seem incapable of understanding is that the entire world of nations is getting sick-to-death of lectures about democracy, American style. The perfected form of American democracy is failing and we all see it clearly. The United States, a two-party state, corrupt, heavily policed and polarized, is now failing to provide the level of progress and safety for its citizens that even the Chinese people are coming to expect. Chinese governance, a one party state, is beginning to look healthier and less frightening than the Orwellian police-state that the American warlords are hell bent on perfecting.

A full century after World War 1resulted in the carving up of Ottoman lands, we are finally going to have to accept allowing the peoples of the Middle East to draft their own borders and make their own laws. It will be messy and painful but the region must be allowed to determine its own natural balances. The Americans have retreated from Iraq. It's time they retreated from the entire region. They have troubles enough at home.

NEW YORK TIMES COVERAGE
The Times has taken plenty of crap in recent years, largely due to the impression it gives off - that it is "establishment media" ... "uber-liberal"... "White House mouthpiece" and more. But sometimes we have to acknowledge the N.Y.T.'s efforts. Such was the case with the July 9th piece "On the Road to Samarra, Glimpses of Iraq's New Fractured Reality". The by-line is Alissa J. Rubin, a journalist who boldly entered bullet and mortar bomb pocked side-streets of Balad. Ms. Rubin took the time to determine the loyalties of the non-descript combatants, and reported with confidence that it is controlled by Kataib Hezbollah, "a militia trained and funded by Iran". The Iraqi army at Balad is assisting Hezbollah fighters, and have set up a training camp in the centre of town. Rather ironic that. American trained Iraqi army officers are now training Hezbollah militiamen, who are being armed by Iran. What she left unreported was activity inside Joint Base Balad. Ms. Rubin had to drive past Balad Airbase to get to Balad City, and pass it again in the return to Baghdad. Wasn't she curious?